With a full day to digest the ugliness of the previous night, Boston Bruins head coach Claude Julien arrived at the Air Canada Centre on Sunday ready for a rant.

And while not venturing into the ridiculous and defending Shawn Thornton's senseless attack on Pittsburgh's Brooks Orpik, Julien couldn't resist taking shots at the Penguins' view of events.

Specifically, the Bruins coach took issue with the rationalization provided by Pittsburgh's James Neal of his knee to the head of Boston's Brad Marchand.

"The one thing about (Thornton) is that anybody who knows him personally knows he's a pretty honest player and pretty honest person, and if he said he really regretted and felt bad, he really did," Julien said prior to his team's date with the Leafs. "I support his comment because I know he's being truthful to that.

"That's more that we can say about players that pretend it wasn't done on purpose. It's pretty obvious when you look at it that (Thornton) did cross the line, but others did too. But sometimes you have to man up to those things and I think he did."

Following the game, a 3-2 Bruins win in Boston, Neal told reporters that the hit wasn't intentional.

"I'm going by him, I don't get out of the way," Neal said. "I need to try to be more careful and, I guess, get my knee out of the way, but I'm not trying to hit him in the head or injure him."

NHL disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan might have a different view, of course. The league has scheduled a phone hearing for Neal, likely Monday. Thornton's in-person judgement day likely won't happen until the middle of the week once the board of governors meeting wraps up in California.

Julien acknowledged what most reasonable observers would -- that the series of incidents on Saturday resulted in a black eye on the game.

"It was a tough night," Julien said. "We know what it does to the game. We know everything that went wrong. Just because you do it. doesn't mean that you don't want to correct it.

"I don't envy (Shanahan's) position right now. He's got some tough decisions to make with his group. At the end of the day, we're going to have to respect it and move on."